Open Channnels
by antepathy
Summary: Comics: IDWverse. Just a little dumb soon to be jossed AU idea for femmes. Windblade, Ratchet


"He talked about you," Windblade said. "Thunderclash, I mean." She stared moodily at the horizon, the light of a fading day casting gold and rose lights, like petals, over her armor. She was seated, just as she'd been when Ratchet came up, in an attitude of meditation.

"Yeah, well, we go back a long way," Ratchet said, trying to be modest, but feeling that little glow of remembered friendship. If he'd learned nothing from the end of the war, he'd learned how valuable that was. And how rare.

"The more I see, the more I'm glad he was the first Autobot we ran into."

He felt that warm glow fade. Yeah, well, Ratchet wasn't going to argue about that. Rodimus had been…testy since returning from the Dead Universe. Then again, Ratchet expected anyone would be a little unbalanced after that. "He's a good mech," Ratchet said, blandly. He wasn't going to speak his thoughts aloud. They were his crewmates, after all. "Your information, though. It's a little outdated." A little. He hadn't been at Deltaran in…millennia. And that's what Chromia had connected him to.

"It's all a little, you know, new to us." She gave a shrug that reminded him, abruptly, painfully, of Drift. "We're trying to catch up."

He wanted to ask, he wanted to press. About the 'her', about who they were, where they'd been. And it made him realize how much he took for granted, his medic's position, his long history. There wasn't a mech on either side he hadn't at least have heard of, couldn't access files for. Until now.

He settled down into a crouch next to her, pretending to watch the sunset. "You know metrotitans."

Ratchet could feel her suspicious look and he knew he'd asked a question she hadn't expected, didn't want to answer. He was a medic: they always knew where to find a wound.

"I do." Her hand moved to her cheek, the red enameling—inlaid, he'd noticed, cut and filled into the skin—and then back at him, and he could feel her weighing something, a set of internal scales shifting. "I'm an Orata."

He couldn't hide the ironic smirk: hadn't Chromia told them that she didn't talk much? "Orata."

"Well, Nautica and Chromia, too," she said. "But they don't. Not anymore." Her mouth worked, as though there was a bitter story behind that, and Ratchet wondered suddenly if he looked at their faceplates, if he'd see, painted over, filled in, similar markings.

"I'm… I still don't know what an Orata is." It sounded capitalized when she spoke, so he tried to do the same, and hoped it didn't sound like a rude question.

"Speaker. We're, I guess, conduits." Her voice took on a distant tone, as though reciting from memory. "Oratae serve as conduits between the Knights, and their creations, the Metrotitans. Capable of ansible transmission, as well as somatoform communication, Oratae hold the sacred duty of connection, through words, thoughts, and feelings." She stopped, as though out of words, her hands fluttering in her lap.

"Ansible." Instantaneous transmission, regardless of distance, folding space. No timelag, nothing. It was…amazing. And the Knights.

She nodded. "Metroplex isn't mine. But I thought…."

Her words trailed off, but she didn't need to bother. He could figure out the rest. Whoever's Orata she had been was long dead: he'd seen the graveyard. It was why she could interpret the code of lights and pulses over the titan's brain module. It was what she was made for, the same way he was a medic.

"That's…"

"Lonely," she said, and then gave a sort of unhappy sigh, as though upset that she'd admitted that. "It used to be-there used to be hundreds of us. And it was like this constant music, and color, and…everything. All the time. In my head, in my body, everywhere. Now," she shook her head. "I can't hear anyone. It's empty and dark."

He could only imagine what that felt like. The isolation, at least, he understood. He'd felt something like that when they were facing the Insecticon swarm, looking out over the ruin of Cybertron, remembering how vibrant and alive it had been, and how grey and tomblike it had become. He shifted his weight on the ground, catching her looking over at him as he squeezed his own hands. "Sorry," he muttered. "Not a fan of things I can't heal."

It was subtle, how she moved, almost imperceptible, the way her shoulders softened, her frame angling minutely toward him. "The world we're in now needs healers," she said, softly.

"Needs more than I can do," he said. He kept thinking he was ready to let go, but then finding himself unable to, as though his hands had locked around his tools.

"We do what we can and hope it's enough," Windblade said, and he felt the slide of one flight panel against his shoulder, her light, gracile hand resting on his. And Ratchet knew she needed to believe it as much as he did, as he turned one hand, palm to the palm of the one who spoke for the Metrotitans.


End file.
